A. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to locating a patron or communicating with a patron, and more particularly, to a system, method, and article of manufacture for locating or communicating with a patron at a hospitality facility.
B. Background Information
Most hospitality facilities, such as hotels, motels, amusement parks, theme parks, casinos, and resorts, face many common problems associated with not being able to locate or communicate with their patrons, such as guests. These problems may result in lost revenues for the hospitality facilities and in an inconvenience for patrons.
One problem is that a patron who wants to communicate with a relative, such as a spouse, may not be able to do so easily. For example, in a casino, a husband and a wife, may play a different game at two different player terminals located at the opposite ends of the casino. If, for example, the husband wants to ask his wife to meet him in the lobby in five minutes, the only way to do this may be to physically search for and locate his wife. This not only inconveniences the patrons, but is bad for business. Casinos want to keep patrons at the player terminals as long as possible to maximize revenues and patron gaming time.
Hospitality facilities also face the problem of finding lost patrons. For example, in an amusement park, if a child is lost, the parent or a hospitality facility employee may have to physically search for the child, which may be time consuming, difficult, and cause lost revenues.
In addition, the hospitality facility also may want to communicate with patrons to inform them about the status of an event, or offer a promotion. For example, in a casino, a patron typically plays both offline games, such as keno, and online games, such as player terminals. To maximize gaming time and entertainment value, a patron may buy a keno ticket and then, go play at a player terminal. After a few minutes, however, the patron may have to interrupt play at the player terminal to obtain the results of the keno game. The patron may have to walk to the keno game area to obtain these results. This frustrates the casinos desire to keep patrons at the player terminals as long as possible and inconveniences the patrons.